ICU Justifies Itself

A whole six months of my time, that's how long it took me to write ICU and get it to a point where I could be happy with it. That's a big chunk of my working life, especially as how I was working for myself and I wasn't getting paid. During that time I was entirely reliant on the income generated from my other software projects, projects that were put on the back burner. Taking the time to write ICU was a risk.

Then there was the matter of should I write it? It was a personal project, it was a tool my wife and I wanted so that we could monitor our daughter when she was using the computer. But we trust our daughter to the nth degree! She has common sense in bucket loads, well beyond her years. She's actually won awards for being such a nice sensible little girl! Was there really any need to monitor her online?

Well yesterday we got the answer I was hoping we'd never get. It's made me realise why ICU is necessary, it's not just us monitoring our kids, but monitoring what other people are saying to them. I was working late last night when I got the ICU notification, I did as I always do and had a quick flick through it. Something didn't seem right. One of the Messenger conversations that had been screen grabbed didn't look like her normal chats. I didn't know the lad she was chatting too and he certainly looked a hell of a lot older than her. Just the way and what she was typing was different. So I asked? "Whose such and such?" "Oh he's just somebody who talks to xxx and xxx (her other 12 year old friends)". "Oh right, how old is he?". "18, we all think he's well fit!".

My wife's face at this point was a picture, I imagine mine was a mighty shade of angry red. No matter how many times we'd told her about only using messenger to chat to her REAL friends around her own age the lure of being "messenger contacts" with somebody that much older was just too much to resist. But should we really be angry with her? I'm more angry with the sort of 18 year old boy that feels the need to chat up 12 year old girls on Messenger. I'm sorry but that's screwed up. He should be in the pub or just generally socialising with 17,18,19 year old girls not sat at home making small talk with 12 year olds over the internet.

It seems to be a real problem where we live, why older teenagers/early twenty something’s feel the need to chat to kids I don't know? I even spoke about it during one of my early radio interviews for ICU. When I was at school the 12 and 13 year old girls always like to show interest in the 14/15 year old boys because they were "mature". Now it seems that they are looking at 18/19 and the boys/lads/young men/men are more than happy to go along with it.

We would never let our 12 year old daughter go on a date with an 18 year old boy, why the hell would we be comfortable with her being chatted up by one online? So if you're 16/17/18/19/20 and like to chat to 10/11/12 year old girls online I've got a couple of suggestions for you:-

1. Don't, get out with girls your own age
2. If you still feel the need you'd sure as hell better be sure that it's not my daughter you're chatting to because then you're on some pretty bloody thin ice.

So the next time some random stranger has a go at me for writing software that causes invasion of privacy, spying and whatever else they come up with, I shall politely tell them to stick it.

Australian Crack Down On Paedophiles

Australian cops have recently arrested 70 people in connection with under age porn on the Internet. The tip off came when the details of over 1500 suspected Australian paedophiles were passed on by Interpol following a six month investigation. Amongst those arrested were a police officer and perhaps even more worryingly a primary school teacher.

Details of how the details came out are nothing short of shocking:-

The Interpol tip off came after a respected European Internet site was hacked, and enabled the users to download images of 95 children in graphic sexual acts and positions. In the 76 hours of its run, the site recorded 12 million hits and was finally shut down


12 million hits, that's a whole lot of sickos!

Making A Little Extra Pocket Money

I don't think it's such a great idea to always play the bad cop, sometimes it's good to be the good one. The thing about the internet is that it opens up so many opportunities, some good and some bad. Instead of constantly telling your kids what they can't do sometimes it's nice to guide them through some of the good points of the internet.

Take my daughter for example, she gets pocket money every month. As with all 12 year old girls, it's never or will never be enough. I decided to have a look online and see if there was anything out there that was 100% child safe that could maybe make a few pound. Lets face facts here, she's part of the internet generation, getting a paper round is way out of the question! Whilst there are hundreds of ways of making extra money online there are very few (in fact none) that I considered OK for my daughter! That was until I stumbled across something called My Search Funds after a friend mentioned something similar. It's run by a registered company based in the UK. All their details appear to check out. The idea is that they pay you a percentage of the advertising revenue that is gained for doing the internet searches that you do everyday anyway. I tried it out myself, they require minimal personal details (no need to give your address/phone etc) and it only takes a few minutes to setup. There are no naughty adverts or anything else bad, they just pay you for using their search bar, it's really simple.

When I told her about it she couldn't wait to get started. The search bar in Firefox was how she searches the web anyway so it didn't require any changes to what she was doing. The results themselves are the same as what you get with Google. She just uses it for when she's searching the net, it's not mega money but it's worth about £8 a month for doing nothing more than what you do currently for free. It's already been more than £20 in her pocket that she wouldn't have otherwise. The internet can be a cool place, don't be afraid to find some of the good things out there and share them with your kids. I'm certainly back in the good books now :)

Forward This On Or Else!

Is anybody else getting fed up with seeing these spam messages? They normally go along the lines of.

"Wow you're not going to believe this but it's true, I did this and got asked out by 10 boys in 1 week, you've got to do it too! You need to forward this message on straight away, to 5 friends and you get asked out once, to 10 and you'll be asked out 5 times and to 20 top be asked out 10 times.

If you don't forward this on and break the chain you'll be dead by this time next week".

Obviously I don't write these for a living! I just can't believe how gullible some people are, even in the last office I worked people would endlessly send these on. I just used to delete them, funnily enough I'm still alive and kicking. The same people that forwarded them on would then complain when e-mail access was taken away from them because of spam abuse. If adults are gullible enough imagine what affect they have on children?

I know my daughter gets at least 3 or 4 of these a week from her friends, the thing is if you look at the messages carefully you can see the real motive. As they are forwarded on they collect literally hundreds of valid e-mail addresses. All it takes if for one of these forwarded messages to fall into the hands of a spammer and straight away your children are getting the latest penis extension news, hard on tablets to their inbox. When I set My daughter up with e-mail I did it using 2 GMail accounts. One was there for her friends, the other for family. They both feed into one so it's not a big problem checking them. Even though she is quite wise when it comes to giving out her e-mail details it's easy to see that 100% of the spam that comes in comes to her "friends" e-mail account. Through no fault of her own she gets about 30 spam messages a day. Did you know that by forwarding on a message to 2 recipients and not hiding (BCC) the others details you're exposing their accounts to e-mail abuse?

I've explained that with all the best will in the world not forwarding on an e-mail can not give you bad luck/kill you, is it worth having a word with your kids?

Spector Pro Review

Spector Pro 6 by Spectorsoft was one of the first child monitoring programs I looked at (mainly because of where they were in Google when searching for child monitoring products). If you're looking for an award winning feature packed monitoring solution that covers absolutely every angle (including the dreaded key logging that I don't like) then Spector Pro 6 could be just what you are looking for. Some of its main computer monitoring features include:-

Screen Recording
Chat/Instant Message Recording/Blocking
Keystroke Logging
Online Search Recording (A record of every search performed through the search engines)
A Record Of All Websites Visited (Down to page level)
E-mail Activity Recording
Program Activity Record (A list of all the programs run on the computer)
Keyword Detection (Keywords can be used to start other monitoring functions)

Whilst personally I think that some of these features are too advanced maybe for the average user or parent (for example you're going to need to know what each program in the program activity report is before passing judgement) the usability overall of the Spector Pro package is one of it's strongest points. The reports it produces do look nice and easy to understand. Obviously the other main plus point is the completeness of the monitoring offered. If you ever wanted to know the nooks and crannies of how a PC you own is being used then Spector Pro is a very viable option.

In terms of installation the product is simply downloaded from the Specorsoft website, from purchasing to installation will only take a matter of minutes . It's also worth noting that a stealth mode is available meaning that the program can be run without trace (of course privacy laws dictate that you have to notify people that the monitoring software is being used). If you do have any problems Spector Pro comes with excellent support options, e-mail, instant chat and telephone support is all available 24 hours a day as well as embedded help in the program and a website FAQ.

Overall Spector Pro provides a fully comprehensive computer monitoring solution that comes with terrific support options at an affordable price of $99.95.

If you're interested you can find out more about Spector Pro by visiting the products official home page. Alternatively if you're convinced enough you can buy the software here (the price of $99.95 is a special offer and won't last long).

The Worlds First Free Child Monitoring Software

Just in case you haven't already noticed I suppose I should announce that ICU is now totally free. No TrialPay, no complicated forms, just click and download. There are a few reasons I've done this:-

1. I always wanted the program to be free to all parents, unfortunatly I had costs that needed covering. Those costs have now been met so the software is yours for free.

2. I wrote the program to meet my own needs. Having enjoyed plenty of feedback I can now see that there are other people who require a little "more". Whilst ICU will be updated with new features on a continous basis the fact that I'm now giving it away means I can look at some of the competitors in an open/ non biased way. I tried quite a few before writing ICU, now I can share those findings.

3. I like giving stuff away, especially when it's useful stuff!

So there you have it, seriously I suppose it's a combination of my initial promotion costs being met (I had to spread the word some how) and the fact that I wanted to talk about some of the other parenting solutions out there. Anyway, I hope that you enjoy your free copy of ICU.

Do Not Let Your Kids Out Of Your Sight!

You shouldn't you know, lock them in the back room somewhere, you don't want paedophiles getting them. Isn't really practical is it? So why would you stop your children enjoying the benefits of the internet just because of some of the dangers that exist?

The UK Press have finally caught up with what I've been preaching since the middle of last year, that Bebo and FaceBook are not suitable for younger children at all and older children should be monitored. The front page of the Daily Mail features a story and it was also prominent on GMTV this morning. However rather than just going through some of the dangers and then explaining HOW as parents we can help our children they have just gone down the line of isn't the internet evil. Aren't Bebo, MySpace and FaceBook evil! Our kids are all doomed!

Many things on the internet are not suitable for children, however many parents aren't aware of what their kids are actually doing online. Whilst it's great of the mainstream media to raise awareness perhaps a slightly more balanced view could be in order. Sure make parents aware of the dangers that are online but please also make them aware that it's not a helpless situation and there are things that they can do to help protect their children when they use the internet as well. Simple things such as blocking sites in their browser of choice and sitting with their kids when they use the computer can really help with younger children. With slightly older children make the parents aware of the monitoring solutions out there (not only ICU, there are about 6 other programs that apply various levels of controls that could equally be used). All I'm saying is that if you're going to make people aware of the dangers, also make them aware of some of the ways of mitigating that danger.